infoTECH News

Toshiba
Corporation (TOKYO:6502) today announced that it has developed a new
DC-DC converter for mobile devices that offers over 85% efficiency
across a load current range more than 3 times wider than that of typical
DC-DC converters. Largely due to a new fast and low-ripple phase
adding/dropping scheme, the converter eliminates more than 58% of power
dissipation during a light load condition, and more than 24% during a
heavy load condition.

Toshiba presented this development at the 2014 IEEE (News - Alert) International
Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, California, on
February 10.

Today's processors utilize multicore designs, resulting in a wide range
of current profiles, and require DC-DC converters with a good efficiency
over a wide range of load currents. This is realized by using a
multiphase architecture that delivers current from several parallel
units called phases, and adjusts the numbe of active phases according
to load conditions to optimize the efficiency of the converter.

However, phase adding or dropping induces a large ripple in the output
voltage, the result of sudden current surges in the converter. For this
reason, the conventional phase adding/dropping scheme can only be
applied to devices, such as desktop PCs, that have capacitors of over
1000�F to counter the ripple. Toshiba (News - Alert) has developed a new phase
adding/dropping scheme that offers over 93% capacitor reduction and
realizes implementation in mobile devices. This is realized by a
seamless phase adding/dropping transition with a less than 10mV ripple,
performed in as fast as 1 switching cycle.

The architecture is based on digital control instead of the mainstream
analog control, and the key concept is to ensure current balancing
during the transition. However, digital control requires analog-digital
converters (ADCs), which boosts system power consumption by 39%.
Toshiba's new hybrid control architecture eliminates more than 90% of
this increase, by time sharing of the existing comparator and
digital-analog converter in the system to produce ADC (News - Alert) conversion,
instead of adding ADC hardware.

About Toshiba

Toshiba is a world-leading diversified manufacturer, solutions provider
and marketer of advanced electronic and electrical products and systems.
Toshiba Group brings innovation and imagination to a wide range of
businesses: digital products, including LCD TVs, notebook PCs, retail
solutions and MFPs; electronic devices, including semiconductors,
storage products and materials; industrial and social infrastructure
systems, including power generation systems, smart community solutions,
medical systems and escalators & elevators; and home appliances.

Toshiba was founded in 1875, and today operates a global network of more
than 590 consolidated companies, with 206,000 employees worldwide and
annual sales surpassing 5.8 trillion yen (US$61 billion). Visit
Toshiba's web site at www.toshiba.co.jp/index.htm

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